


Immortal

by Rollingwithchinchillas



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M, ending Kurtbastian, mentions of Brittana, sebtana friendship, starting Klaine
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-24
Updated: 2014-01-24
Packaged: 2018-01-09 20:55:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1150707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rollingwithchinchillas/pseuds/Rollingwithchinchillas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sebastian moves to Dalton, he gets placed into the room with an intoxicating smell. It's the smell that he hasn't smelt in 70 years; that of the person to whom he belongs. The smell is burned into the campus, into his room, into the car park, and it is that of his Bonded - the person he follows through life. And Sebastian is determined to find them. Supernatural!AU, Human!Kurt, Immortal!Sebastian</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Separated into four parts for easy reading.

      Scandals is becoming quite dreary now that the fish pool has either dried up or constituted of men with that age line that Sebastian isn’t willing to cross, and this little town is starting to be a little too small, which means that it’s time for Sebastian to move on, to get in his car and drive another town over, wander around there a bit, sticky beak (and then sticky dick). His wandering days in Lima will be short lived then, and Sebastian doesn’t mind, considering how backward and hick the town is in general, and he’s not going to find his bonded in this dump.

      That night, what he determines to be his last night in Lima and surrounding area, he goes home with two obviously underage boys, to a tidy three bedroom house and absent parents. They’re called Jack and Riley, and they’re nice enough boys, if not still deeply closeted and confused as to what to do with their dicks, both lacking any notable experience, and both quite enamored with each other. They cared about Sebastian in a shallow kind of way; they make sure he’s comfortable and offer him drinks avoiding eye contact with each other the whole time, and worry about him in between the sheets even though he’s the most experienced of all three of them, and when they welcome Sebastian to stay for the night, he accepts, even though his brain tells him not to. He ends up watching movies with two boys he hardly knows; they watch _Moulin Rouge_ and _Latter Days_ , and Sebastian doesn’t even have to pretend he doesn’t know them when they start crying, because he doesn’t. It’s actually quite fun, and it’s 5am, and there’s a large chance that may actually be able to get another round out of them if they stop playing heart eyes at each other. 

      Their eyes follow each other’s movements and laugh at things that aren’t funny, and tap their legs against each other’s for mere seconds with shy smiles, but they completely avoid the fact that they’d just slept together, and were somehow magically avoiding the fact that they were both naked with a stranger. If Sebastian hasn’t been feeling so damned sedated, he’d probably feel used.

      “When are you two going to admit that you want each others’ dicks? Because you can’t keep playing threesomes to avoid the point.” Sebastian reaches for the popcorn on the coffee table, shoving a handful into his mouth. “Look, I don’t care, and a lot of guys you’d meet at bars wouldn’t care either, because being used for sex is a win-win situation. But do you really want to do that to yourselves?”

      Swapping looks with Riley, Jack replies, connotation heavy in his voice. “Have you ever _had_ someone?”

      “Yeah,” Sebastian shrugs. “He was pretty cool. _It_ was pretty cool and it’s not something to waste. I haven’t seen him in a long time though.” He’s glad that they don’t ask anymore questions - his answer seems to have impacted them more than he had anticipated, eyes downcast but flickering to meet each other’s- because there are some things he can’t say without sounding crazy, and because his life is made of a lot of questions of which he doesn’t know the answer to. Like the fact that he hasn’t seen his partner - his bonded partner - in 70 years; like the fact that somehow, he is actually immortal; like the fact that he can control his physical appearance.

      When Sebastian checks himself back into the conversation, they’re talking about an upcoming glee club competition. He doesn’t pay them much attention, and when they ask him a question he blindly mutters a ‘yes’ back to them, even though he doesn’t know what he’d agreed to. The next morning when Sebastian is about to leave, they somehow get him into their car instead, and he ends up watching a bunch of dancing boys in well tailored suits.

      The lure of straight-but-questioning private school boys is too much for Sebastian to handle, and it has been a while since he’d been to school, with no interest about learning things he has lived through in unemotional words in the pages of history books. The act of wandering has lost it’s appeal, as well as not having a permanent bed, not knowing where he was going to wake up. The whole immortal thing is actually starting to loose its appeal, and friends sounds like a good idea. So when the opportunity arises for Sebastian to become a student of Dalton Academy, he takes it. (Where ‘opportunity’ actually means posing as his own father and bribing the administration.) So he fakes his date of birth (the 8/11/1712 isn’t going to go down well) and signs away his life for the next three years, swapping it all for keys, a blazer and three square meals a day.

      Not that there’s anything wrong with being immortal. The lack of need for food, sleep and oxygen is good sometimes, and living forever has its perks, but after a while, everything becomes repetitive. When you’ve been everywhere and done everything (and everyone) you need something to fill your days. High school, although useless, seems like a good enough way to fill his days. It doesn’t help that he saw that the dancing boys had nice asses.

      “Do you want to say goodbye to your father?” the lady behind the reception desk asks as she hands over a set of keys to Sebastian.

      “And pretend he cares? No thanks,” Sebastian replies, because even when the man was alive, he didn’t care, no matter how long ago it was. Probably because he was the son of a common whore and Sebastian doesn’t actually know who his father is, but over 300 years he has worked (who is Sebastian kidding, fucked) his way through his daddy issues.

      As he’s hauling a single box down the halls of the Dalton Academy dormitories, he is glad that he has decided to settle down. Searching for his  bonded is fatiguing, especially considering that he doesn’t even know their name in this life. He knows what they look like and what they smell like and what they taste like, but he lacks a basic name. And he has spent the last few decades wandering from place to place, hoping to find something, but with nothing but his luck, nothing has turned up, and it is probably just time to accept that he’s going to be alone for a century.

      The boys who are peaking out of their rooms to catch a sight of the new guy seem attractive so far, and overall they smell nice enough that they are appealing. As he walks further and further down the hall, he begins to smell something rather potent, a sweet smell gets stronger and stronger, until he finds the point of origin - or more accurately, the room of origin.

      The room - his room, if the number on the door is correct - has a smell ingrained into the walls, in the mattress, around the wooden bed head, in the back of the closet, in the metal of the door handle. Sebastian’s nose doesn’t turn up in disgust though, like it usually does due to its sensitivity. This one is sweet and familiar; it’s the one he has lacked for 70 years. And now it’s everywhere in his room.  It’s the unique smell of his bonded, the sweet personified smell that draws Sebastian across continents, in wisps along the wind. It’s the person to which he belongs, first in the format of Conrad and then in all those who followed.

      As soon as Sebastian moves into Dalton Academy, he spent three days in his bedroom. This wasn’t typical behavior for Sebastian - he could hardly stay still for three hours, no matter three days - but never the less, it did in fact happen. He had no shame in this, even as Sebastian hears his new dorm mates snoop around the head of his room, daring each other under their breaths to knock on the door. Sebastian was glad they stop by for a chat or knock or even try to get in, because he did look like a panty sniffer with his head buried into the mattress.

      It’s creepy, Sebastian has to admit, and it’s also a coincidence, Sebastian also has to admit, and a happy one at that.

      On the first day, Sebastian lets himself relish it all. As pathetic as it is, it means that he’s close. He’s close to his bonded and he has been alone so long that even this is euphoric. (He’d hate to think what Jack and Riley would say about this.)

      On the first night, Sebastian breaks his own rules and calls the numbers written on a piece of paper in his back pocket. He ends up at Scandals with Jack and Riley, and when he masterly sneaks somebody back into the dorm with him, he gets a really good fuck, giving his body into the sensation of flesh, while letting his head give into the smells of his room and memories of his past.

 

+

      It turns out that it’s not too hard to find information about the past students of Dalton Academy, with a focus on the previous occupant of his room. It ends up being harder to distinguish between the two interwoven people who come up together in his investigation. Blaine and Kurt. It’s apparent that they can only be spoken of as a unit, and Sebastian isn’t sure as to which of them is his bonded, because they seem to have spent their whole time together. His room belonged to Kurt, but it seems that Blaine was around enough that people couldn’t tell the difference, and as the conversation goes on, he finds out that Blaine likes to perform, used to be in the Warblers, pays careful attention to his hair, and has an eccentric taste in clothing, traits generally found in his bonded.

It’s almost too good to be true.

 

+

 

Jeff, a boy he had met in class and become friends with, was lying on his floor, stretched out under the sun like a cat, head half buried in a text book, trying to solve a chemistry equation when Sebastian walks out of his shared en-suite style bathroom, with a towel wrapped around his waist.

Sebastian isn’t blind. He has seen the way that Jeff responds to the people around him (especially those in his newly formed friendship group); the way he acts with Wes, the way he acts with Nick’s girlfriend Jane, and the way he interacts with Nick. Jeff is harboring some kind of affection for Nick, but as far as Sebastian can tell, they’re both obvious. The few times that they’d stayed up studying Jeff had talked about actors in dreamy terms (Tom Hiddleston this, Benedict Cumberbatch that), and about girlfriends in stony words. It’s obvious, to Sebastian at least, that Jeff is gay, but hasn’t realised it yet. He cares for the boy in some way - he’s not sure yet how - which means that he has to spend a large amount of energy making sure that he doesn’t accidentally out the boy, but that doesn’t mean he’s planning on making it easy for Jeff. Sebastian’s hoping that a nudge in the right direction may start the ball rolling, and if that means he needs to walk around in a towel a few times, so be it.

Jeff looks startled, his eyes wary. They lock onto Sebastian for a minute, and Sebastian can basically feel the intensity with which Jeff is looking, and then they avert so quickly that Sebastian may actually have to be offended.

“Uh,” Jeff stuttered and Sebastian mentally high fives himself, because on some level, it worked.

Really, if it comes down to it, Sebastian is more than willing to take one for the team if it helps Jeff out, even though he made a promise to not sleep with any of immediate friends.

“You should audition for the Warblers,” Jeff scrambles, just as there’s a forceful knock on the door, in the sound of wood against wood.

“He’s right,” Sebastian hears come through the door, Wes’ voice clearly distinguishable.

Sebastian didn’t realise he was singing in the shower again, and when he opens the door, Wes is crowded up against it with his gavel up against the door.

And it’s that easy for him to join a bunch of singing bird-humans.

 

+

 

The Warblers take up more time than he had originally thought they would, but when he gets promoted to singing lead at the end of his second week (“We have no choice. There hasn’t been such a strong voice since Blaine,”) he’s quietly smug about it. The couches smell faintly of his bonded, which he believes to be the Blaine one now. He has had to stop asking for information about Blaine and Kurt, because he does have a reputation to maintain and the amount of questions he had been  about them was probably becoming too intense and borderline stalkerish.

It does come as a slight shock to find that Blaine and Kurt are more than friends though; they’re the definition of a power couple, it seems.

Snorting, Sebastian finds offence in the existence of Kurt Hummel. Not that such a person would stop him.

 

+

 

Sebastian spends a bit of time thinking about his bonded that night. He uses the term ‘bonded’ for lack of any other appropriate words, because there isn’t exactly a handbook for his situation. All he knows is that he was born, abandoned by his father as a teenager, and then grew old in a town that would now be located in Eastern Germany. In his old age he wasn’t graceful, and a simple walk into the village for even bread became a strain, and in the darker hours of the night, he’d tell you about how he doesn’t want to be, about how his wife repulsed him on such a basic level.

One day when his limbs didn’t want to listen to him, the feebleness of his legs showing his age, he fell over a stick, was found unconscious by his wife and then rushed to the old cottage housing the small town doctor - Doctor Humbert - and his nephew.

Fed the milk of the poppy, he dreampt. He dreampt of a boy; a boy with a long torso and sculpted shoulders, dark brown hair and eyes of glasz. He dreampt of being young and health again, of bedding the boy over and over again. He imagined dinners and deserts with this boy, travelling, learning, eating, but mostly he imagines a life - a life more than the one he lived with his wife.

When the poppy starts wearing off - he’d been deemed too far to save, too old and hence a waste for resources - he opened his eyes to the face of his dreams.

Conrad, as the boy was called, had no more than ten and nine years, training to be a doctor under his uncle, with looks even more startling than in his dreams.

In the moments that Sebastian was awake, Conrad attended to him. As Sebastian died in bed, he reached out, grabbing for anything, fingers spasming, until a pair of warm, slender fingers slid in between his. Conrad sang to him, and when the pain took over, Sebastian could hear the voice in his dreams. When Sebastian awoke in the middle of the night, Conrad was still there, telling young man stories to fill the silence. He told Sebastian of his want to make clothes, but how he can’t; he talked of his dead father in loving terms, and how his family was counting on him for money. He told Sebastian of how he’ll be the best doctor to ever live, no matter the cost: “No person should have to experience the pain of losing a beloved. It rips you apart in ways that nought thought possible.”

This boy had seen more pain in his short life that Sebastian had seen in his long one.

Sebastian wasn’t ready to die; he hasn’t even lived yet.

“I want to be young again,” Sebastian wheezed, on what would have been his death bed, if Conrad hadn’t pierced him with his eyes. Conrad was searching for something in Sebastian’s eyes, something that may not have even existed, and the strength of the look forced Sebastian to look away.

“Do you really?” Conrad asked, and Sebastian couldn’t reply, because he fell unconscious.

Next time he woke, his throat was burning, his body sore. When he found feeling in his limbs, he sat himself up, and immediately noticed that his arms didn’t sag and shake like they used to. The ground under his hands was dirt with grass; completely different to the mattress he had lost consciousness on. When he looked at his hands, the skin around his fingers was tight, like a young man’s. His hands moved to run over his head, and there was hair there. His fingers scooted over his face of soft, wrinkle free skin, and everything he looked at was crystal clear. Including the boy sitting across from him, perched awkwardly on a rock.

“How do you feel?” Conrad asked, holding out a mirror towards Sebastian.

Taking the mirror to look at himself, he looked like a young boy. No older than Conrad himself. “What did you do?”

Conrad didn’t answer, instead pulling at his neckties until he produced a locket from around his neck. The locket was small and made of a brass looking type of material. Conrad holds it in his hand it is open for Sebastian to see, and inside are two pictures. One of Sebastian himself, and Conrad in the other, neither of them a day over twenty. “I couldn’t let you die, not on my watch.” When Sebastian moves closer to look at the locket, Conrad snaps it shut. “My life belongs to you now, and you must look after it appropriately.”

And this is where Sebastian’s story starts. Responsible for the life of a beautiful stranger.

They left their small town, and moved to the outskirts of Hanover. They fell in love ever so quickly, and learn to love ever so deeply.

When Conrad died a few weeks later of influenza, Sebastian mourned. He wandered around the continent for a while, trying to drink and fuck away his memories in Paris and Amsterdam and the Spanish Netherlands, and he spent years wandering down towards the tip of Naples. He didn’t eat or sleep, and once he tried to drown himself, because he knows that Conrad didn’t really die of influenza; Sebastian had his life tucked away in the locket. But Sebastian didn’t die, and he didn’t freeze.

He guarded the locket with his life, stuck eternally closed, and finally fourteen years after Conrad’s death, he finds himself lying in the middle of an Naples’ field, himself not aged at all.

It’s cold and he’s shivering, but it couldn’t kill him. It numbed the pain of his guilt though, and he lied in that field for a few moons. He lied in that field until he was found by the wife of owner of the land and dragged to a house, being screamed at in a language he doesn’t understand. He’s slapped a few times, and his guess was that he’s being accused of theft, not that he really gives a rat’s tail.  She was dressed in many layers, with hair pulled tightly back and apron around her waist. She threatened him with a frypan, swinging it back and forward, until her voice suddenly changed and she was sliding it onto the table. When Sebastian turned, he sees a copy of a fourteen year old Conrad.

Sebastian smiles. The boy smiles back at him.

“Il bambino va alla vostra stanza, Dino, capite? Dino!” the woman said.

“Dino,” Sebastian repeats, feeling the name in his mouth. The boy squeaked in response, and although it was higher, the essence of Conrad was there.

That night when Sebastian makes his way out, he wishes he was fourteen. And then he is fourteen again, body awkward and bones hurting from puberty.

He snuck into Dino’s room that night, scaling the ice laid pails, and the other boy isn’t surprised it. Instead, it seems that Dino had been expecting it.

“Do you recognise this?” Sebastian asks, showing Dino the locket.

“Non capisco,” Dino replies, but the boy is still eyeing the locket, so Sebastian stretches his arm out further until Dino takes it. The sound of a click vibrates through the air, and the locket falls open in Dino’s hands. Dino remembers.

Really, Sebastian’s relationship with his bonded is just a worldwide, time inclusive game of cat and mouse.

 

+

 

Memories of Conrad and Dino and the others that followed stored away, Sebastian wakes with a renewed feeling of hope in the world. He spends half of his first class blatantly hitting on Matt, and then when he gets a substitute for second, he spends the whole class trying to convince the teacher to find a broom-cupboard with him. (It makes Jeff blush and the rest of the class doesn’t say anything in fear.) When he does persuade the substitute - who is actually a student teacher because all the subs are sick - to join him in the cupboard, he comes out with a glow on his face and tousled hair. (This makes Jeff blush again, and nobody says anything in fear.) He’s close to finding his bonded, he tells himself, so it’s time to celebrate.

End of class rolls around and he’s texting Riley and Jack, wondering if they’ve sorted out their issues yet or he’s about to get lucky again, when Warbler practice begins. The song they’re practicing is the same one they have been for a few weeks now but the Warbler council is deliberating, when the room breaks out into whispering. _Blaine Anderson is here_ , everybody is saying around him, so Sebastian pulls the group into a rehearsal, ready to charm his bonded with a song. His eyes are darting over his fellow students, intently looking for soft brown hair at about his height, so he misses the small dark haired teenage boy that walks through.

 

+

 

For a long time, Sebastian waited. He went where his feelings would take him, usually catching his bonded in one life or another. He waited, didn’t pick up stragglers or pay for brothels, in a form of fidelity. It wasn’t until the start of the 1940s that this sentiment changed.

Drawn to a burlesque club, Sebastian entered warily. He was a gentleman, and had been for as long as he could remember (ignoring that stint after Conrad’s death). He somehow manages to nurse a single drink for the whole show, and by the time the last performer enters the stage, he is completely confused as to why he was there; all the performers were women - this he knew by sight as well.

The chair drags as Sebastian pushes off it, leaving a tip on his table because although he didn’t drink, he did spend a lot of time there, and the sound rings loudly in the newly accrued silence of the club.

Shimmering under the stage light is a definitely masculine body, making the whole club strangely turned on. There’s no hiding that this boy singing with a girl’s voice is intact a boy, and the silence lets his voice ring. The club hadn’t been as silent for any of the other performers; this boy seems to be the star performance. Gender doesn’t matter, because everybody is finding the performance erotic, notes following the trail of clothing the boy is leaving scattered in his trails. He works the room as he sings, running hands down the sides of faces as he moves through the crowd, leaving sexually confused people behind him with his expanses of milky, flawless skin, and it’s almost like his skin catches in the light. When the performer, who will later be presented as ‘Porcelain’, starts making his way towards Sebastian, he holds his breath and digs his fingers into the velvet side of the chair.

 

+

 

Sebastian does well in hiding his disappointment, smoothly transitioning to be singing to the hobbit man child called Blaine Anderson who was dating his bonded. It would be a good idea to check out his competition. He feels idiotic for thinking that his bonded was Blaine, and even more idiotic for not looking at the yearbooks available to him in the library.

He grabs Blaine’s attention easily, and later, after Blaine has been metaphorically passed around the Warblers, it isn’t hard to convince the boy into coffee. Where by coffee, he means subtle interrogation.

 

+

 

Porcelain stops in front of Sebastian, left only in his underwear and white, elbow length gloves. He starts to pull at the left glove at each finger, until he smooths the glove off in one complete motion, the silk running against Porcelain’s skin and it lands in front of Sebastian. The same thing happens with the right glove, his dainty fingers pulling it off before they’re both discarded to the side. Sebastian’s still holding his breath, wondering if Porcelain recognises him, but he doesn’t get the chance to think beyond that because he’s folding himself into Sebastian’s lap.

Porcelain pouts, tongue running against the bottom of his lip before he chucks his head back with the last note of the song. His knees are either side of Sebastian (which explains the weird width of the chairs) and his head falls down beside Sebastian’s, breathing heavily as his hands mould around Sebastian’s, holding onto the chair. Raggedy breathes in his air, Sebastian doesn’t know what to do. Up close, the boy is covered in make up, with mascara framing his eyes, and a slight smattering of glitter across his skin, and he’s settling himself into Sebastian’s lap, crotches settling beside each other.

The song changes, a more rapid banging kind of song starting from the musicians, and Porcelain starts moving his body to the rhythm. He’s dragging himself along the length of Sebastian’s leg, burying his head into Sebastian’s neck with kitten licks. His moving body glitters with the light, and Porcelain guides their combined hands to rest on his own back. Instinctually, Sebastian runs his hands up the length of clear skin, up and down, up and down, letting himself feel.

The attention of the whole club is on Sebastian - jealously, want - and Sebastian’s whole attention is on Porcelain.

 

+

 

It’s not hard to fluster Blaine, to flirt until it makes the boy uncomfortable in his response. Blaine doesn’t rebuff Sebastian’s advances, which paints a smirk across his face. “Don’t be modest,” Sebastian drawls out, letting his eyes drift over Blaine’s form. “I was like, I don’t know who this Blaine guy is, but apparently he’s sex on a stick and sings like a dream.”

Blaine doesn’t respond, at all, and not only does he not say anything or try to get Sebastian to stop flirting, he accepts Sebastian’s invitation for a further meeting.

 

+

 

“Why so down honey?”  Porcelain asks after his song finishes. He’s supposed to be back stage, but he’s ignoring the ushers shaking the curtains in favour of Sebastian.

Lips curling around his words, Porcelain’s hand starts moving along the length of Sebastian’s body. “Anything I can fix?”

“You don’t know me,” Sebastian interjects with a shaken voice. The fingertips running circles on his neck are distracting and make Sebastian shiver involuntarily. With the back of a finger, Porcelain stokes around the frame of Sebastian’s face, dragging on the outer shell of Sebastian’s ear.

“Does it matter?” Porcelain whispers as he leans in to speak into Sebastian’s ear. “Life is just sex and death honey. And, well, you’re not dead so all you’re left with is sex.” He grinds down into Sebastian’s lap, basically purring. “And sex is just sex. A physical outlet.”

Fiddling fingers find their way under Sebastian’s collar, they pull out the hanging locket and chain. Porcelain spins it around in his hands. “But you are the sentimental type, aren’t you honey?”

Sebastian still can’t say anything in response. His mind is stuck between the physicality of his current situation and the fact that somehow, Porcelain seems to know. He seems to know that there is something between them. The light in his eyes tells Sebastian that Porcelain understands the significance of this locket, but nothing happens.

Sebastian didn’t hand the locket, so nothing happens.

Well, nothing happens may in fact be a lie.

Porcelain’s fingers draw along the side of Sebastian’s lips, top one first and then the second one, letting it catch and dragging it out. They’re close enough that Porcelain can easily swap his finger for his own teeth, and Sebastian isn’t proud of the sound he makes in response.

 

+

 

Blaine is still flustered when they enter the Lima Bean, and Sebastian doesn’t try to draw attention to their entry. On one of the sides he can see, who he assumes to be, Kurt Hummel sitting. He looks exactly as Conrad did all those years ago.

He wants to court Kurt, see how much of a challenge Blaine is, because the boy seems flimsy in his opinions and self. Hopefully though, Blaine will be a challenge to work against, because if he’s not that, then he’s just an obstacle.

He’s going to do this without the locket’s influence. He hasn’t had enough of a challenge in a long time.

“Look, Sebastian, I have a boyfriend,” Blaine says almost like it’s a horrible secret.

“Doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you,” Sebastian replies, and then Kurt has noticed them and has started approaching.

“Who’s really great?” Kurt asks, and it takes a lot of self restraint to not say or do something stupid. All high and soft, Kurt’s voice is just as Sebastian remembered and imagined it. Instead, he lets himself feel the intensity of the glare Kurt is giving him. In response, he runs his eyes along the length of Kurt’s body, right out to the extended hand that he shakes. The handshake is stiff, but Kurt’s touch is warm and encompassing. 

Sebastian leans back in his chair. “Got it.” And he certainty does have Kurt’s attention.

 

+

 

Porcelain invites himself back to Sebastian’s place, and doesn’t say anything when Sebastian shows him into a rented bedroom with a shared bathroom attached. He moved around a lot, and didn’t think he’s be around this part of America long enough that he needed a proper house. (Besides, the women did his washing for free here.)

Porcelain’s eyes scan the place, obviously finding offence in the mush-mashed colour scheme of the room, or the general lack of any personal objects.

That night, they make the bed very personal. At first Sebastian has a bit of trouble with having sex with somebody he isn’t emotionally connected to, because although it is the body of his bonded, he hasn’t received the locket and remembered all the knowledge and memories of other lives that goes along with it. Porcelain makes it very clear that he has no interest in “whatever is going on with that locket” and never directly touches it if Sebastian tries to hand it to him.

So Sebastian learns the art of fucking.

The next morning when Porcelain is gone, the only thing to prove he has been there was the lingering smell and cleanly written note sitting on his bare desk.

_Even good sex can just be that: good sex._


	2. Chapter 2

Sebastian is surprised by how willing Kurt seems to accept Sebastian’s offer to go to Scandals. Kurt’s posturing of Blaine at the Lima Bean is amusing to Sebastian, as Kurt’s eyes follow Blaine and his fingers gripping onto the shorter boy like a lifeline. (It doesn’t occur to Sebastian that there may be some history that does actually make Blaine a lifeline.)

The drive back to Dalton is quiet; the traffic is smooth which is a god send because Sebastian doesn’t pay as much attention to the road as he probably should. He’s not mooning or love struck or doing any of those things. He’s not daydreaming or writing little scenarios in his head; he’s just calm. Proximity, no matter how harsh the exchanged words were, seems to have calmed him in a way that he hasn’t felt in a long time.

When he gets back to Dalton, he does some investigating, now knowing exactly what he’s looking for. He wants to know why Kurt left Dalton.

At first he is kinda trumped, because Kurt only appears in one year book, which leads Sebastian to believe that Kurt hadn’t started off at Dalton, which nobody had mentioned. He had correctly assumed that Kurt had transferred out of Dalton, but he had never thought that maybe he had transferred in first place. Kurt is also listed as receiving a partial scholarship, another fact that Sebastian hadn’t considered. He isn’t sure what is up anymore,  so when Jeff comes over to study that night, he asks.

“He transferred in, and only the council and Blaine knew why,” Jeff explains before sticking his head into his text book again, complaining about balancing chemistry equations.

Sebastian slips little questions in-between teaching Jeff the steps, and once Jeff understands, his mind is left to its own devices. It’s obvious that Kurt is out, which is good, and it seems that Kurt has the support of his family, which is also newly formed if he has got everything correct. He doesn’t know why Kurt transferred to Dalton, and more importantly why he left, but he knows that Blaine left Dalton to be with Kurt; so Sebastian’s competition may be a lot more serious than he had originally anticipated.

Why had he decided to do this sans locket? Because Sebastian isn’t sure that it would work. He doesn’t have enough charm, and with his tongue’s first instinct to cut rather than cuddle, he may have trouble. Kurt’s posturing at the Lima Bean made it obvious that Blaine is the weakest link in their relationship, and while Sebastian doesn’t necessarily want to be a home wrecker, he does want Kurt.

Who is he kidding? He doesn’t care if he becomes a home wrecker.

 

+

 

Chemistry rolls around the next day, and since it’s AP Chemistry, he gets the chance to subtly quiz the head warblers on their nature of Kurt’s transfer, but they’re tighter lipped than Jeff had been. He can’t even squeeze or trail anything out of them, so he settles for spending the whole class hitting on them until either they’re a tomato or tell him to shut up.

So that night when he rolls up to Scandals, he goes in blind.

He gets there before both Kurt and Blaine do, takes a few shots and dances about with some of the early crowd. Most of the people around him are familiar by face if nothing else, the largest percentage composed of the older bears who spend a lot of their time at Scandals. They smile at him the way they smile at each other, old eyes full of pity. They’re sad too, and they’re mostly just yearning for a companion.

Sebastian wonders if that is what they are seeing in him.

He lets a new comer buy him a drink, a boy with blonde hair and blue eyes, and touches the boy’s body to pass the time. He enters the bathroom with the boy, and when they’re done, he leaves him hanging in a stall as Sebastian takes himself back out to the bar, his (slightly annoying) supernatural hearing picking up on a familiar voice complaining about Chaz Donaldsworth.

He orders drinks then, deciding on a just a plain beer for Blaine and a Shirley Temple for Kurt. He expects Kurt to be a bit pissy over it, but then he does expect a challenge from Kurt. Besides, he knows that Kurt’s the designated driver, and the idea of him getting in an alcohol fuelled car accident is quite terrifying, especially considering that Sebastian just found him again.

They spend the night trading insults, and Sebastian lavishes in Kurt’s eyes on his back as he dances around Blaine. He lets go of his body as Kurt makes his way in, shimmying into the small space between Blaine and himself, showing claim over Blaine in a way that is completely intoxicating. The fact that Kurt thinks he’s after Blaine is delirious, but if Kurt is going to keep dancing as he is, it’s a sacrifice that Sebastian is willing to make. 

Kurt and Blaine don’t stay for very long. They leave before 11pm, and Sebastian’s mood has turned foul from the fact that he was still completely grounded on square one, after having all of his advances blown off or completely ignored. He didn’t think that he’d be able to get anything out of Kurt - this one is all moral and everything - but he also didn’t think he’d be this dry. History suggests that he’d be able to see a spark in Kurt’s eyes suggesting that there was something, but the only thing Kurt has is sharp words and protected eyes.

He trails out behind them when they go to leave, pushing through the door separating the smell of old men and alcohol into the parking lot. The man on the door sniggers as Sebastian steps out, muttering ‘twink’ under his breath, and he chuckles back.

He’s in no mood to be insulted.

The man is about to make another comment, but Sebastian doesn’t need to hear whatever the asshole has to say or alert Kurt and Blaine to his position, so his hands scramble to the doorman’s belt, unhooking it and unceremonsily shoving his hands down the man’s pants. “Be quiet for me,” he leers into the man’s ear as he starts listing out.

“This is the best night of my life,” Sebastian hears Blaine slur, but Sebastian disagrees. It has gotten him nothing; it has gotten him nowhere.

He listens to the couple row, hands playing around in the doorman’s pants, and he’d find humour in the fact that they’re not fucking if Kurt didn’t sound so obliviously uncomfortable - if Kurt’s voice hadn’t sounded like how he had talked to Sebastian earlier.

It registers on some unconscious level, and he knows that he could go out and intervene in the situation, but he knows that it wouldn’t be welcomed. So he listens to every word of their argument, knowing that he can’t do anything. He feels so powerless, listening and not acting.

There are the sounds of Blaine’s footsteps starting to merge with the distance, and as Sebastian quickly extracts himself from the older man’s pants, he peeks around to see that Kurt's arms are wrapped around himself almost like they are the only thing holding him together, and they probably are. Sebastian, as much as he doesn't want to admit it, understands how it feels when the person you love hurts you. Just because he expresses it far and few in-between, it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t understand.

The lights of the car park are flickering like the cheapskates they are, as if they were watching the confrontation and laughing at it. Sebastian isn't sure if they're laughing at him or Kurt though.

Finding the courage to walk over and check on Kurt, if not obviously then sneakily, he tries to keep him self smaller than he usually is. He doesn't want to scare Kurt, or make the situation worse, but what he doesn't exactly expect is that his presence is probably the worst thing for Kurt.

Kurt snaps his head around and honest to god hisses, teeth barring for a second. Sebastian - as softly as he can - offers his help. His words are round and non-threatening, but that doesn't seem to mean anything these days. “Is there any thing I can do to help?

In retrospect, when Kurt yells at him he should have expected it. Their only interactions that Kurt can remember haven't been pleasant, and Sebastian also at slaps himself in his own stupidity.

"There is nothing you could ever do, in any way, that would ever be able to help me. Not unless you're willing to move countries."

Kurt's words are so clean and clear, their meaning as sharp and obvious as a knife, and he can't pretend to ignore them or reply to them. For a start, he doesn't want to hurt Kurt more than he already is. So he doesn't go after Kurt. He watches as Kurt leaves, the other boy trying to keep his head up high and obviously not cry. Even with the physical distance acclimating between them, it is obvious that Kurt is hurt. More than hurt, and Sebastian can do absolutely nothing about it.

It seems that Sebastian has made a great tactical error. The idea that angling for Blaine would get Kurt seems to have been wrong and misguided. It's all wrong for this version of Kurt- it may have worked on a few other reincarnations- but hitting on the partner doesn't seem to work for this one. It's blareingly obvious now, and all Sebastian can think about is the fact that there is so much about this version that he doesn't know.

 

+

 

He can’t stand remaining at Scandals now, bad mood overpowering every other feeling and need. The couples of men - even if they’re just ten minute couples - are reminding him of something he doesn’t have. He leaves, and ends up in a straight bar, feeling disgusted by the surrounding couples _and_ the overwhelming straightness of the room.

There’s a girl across sitting around the bend of the bar - long dark hair and olive skin - and she’s stunning. Even from across the bar and sitting down, he can tell that she has a body that many people would kill for. For a second he wishes that he was straight, that he wasn’t eternally bonded because then his life wouldn’t be so damned complicated. He could pursue this beautiful girl, and everything would be a lot less complicated; he wouldn’t have to sniff out gay bars, and his potential fish pool would be a lot larger.

He wonders if he could start something with this girl.

Her eyes rise to meet his, and they’re as tired as he feels. There is an air of familiarness to them - does he know her? - but it all resonates with him on a level that no other person has. Kurt may be his bonded, but this girl understands.

They look at each other for a minute, and Sebastian wonders if she knows what he is, or rather that he knows what she is. He has never met somebody like him before, and he hasn’t really contemplated the idea that there may be others, and as he looks at this girl now, he knows that he had been so wrong in being alone.

Her eyes invite him over, and as he makes his way around the bar, she stands up, brushing down the creases in her perfectly fitted dress. She’s wearing killer boots too, and self consciously feeling underdressed Sebastian brings his hand up to his neck, pushing his collar down as he pretends to play with his hair.

He goes to introduce himself, and be as polite as he can given his mood, but instead he finds her walking away from his words. She makes her way towards the door, and when Sebastian doesn’t follow, she yells towards him. “Meercat, you coming or not?”

 

+

 

As they make their way down the street, their silence is comfortable. They don’t intrude themselves, she doesn’t ask for his jacket and he doesn’t offer. They make no way towards cars nor do they reach for phones. She brushes back her hair once, but other than that, he hands don’t move from her pocket, and their eyes don’t meet. It would be completely weird if it weren’t so comfortable.

It isn’t until they mutually settle upon a restaurant that either of them speaks. The girl turns to Sebastian, voice high and beautiful (although not like Kurt’s) with a slight accent. “You’re like me, aren’t you?”

It’s not what Sebastian expects her to say, betting on something regarding the menu of the small restaurant, and it throws him off guard. “Well, I can’t stand the idea of a vagina, so I hope not.”

If looks could kill.

He follows her brisk pace into the restaurant, until they end up in a small booth at the back, sitting at a table with a candle sitting on it.

“I can’t imagine anyone wanting to sleep with you,” she says as she glances over the drinks menu, “so that shouldn’t be such a problem.”

“I’ll have you know that I have no problems finding people to su-“

“You smell like cheap beer and man sweat; don’t patronise me.” She cuts him over, fingers tapping rhymically against the table as she tries to signal for a waiter.

“Don’t patronise you? Maybe your mama didn’t make enough as a cleaning lady to send you to school honey, but I think you need to go find a dictionary.”

“It looks like they only taught you how to spend daddy’s money and no manners, huh? Maybe you should actually put some of that money to good use and get whatever is going on with your face fixed instead of financing half of America’s prostitutes.”

Sebastian tilts his head and pretends to squint. “Oh, so maybe that’s where I recognize you from. Sorry about pushing the gas so quickly, but from far away you looked like a man.”

The waiter standing beside their table looks horrified, witnessing their exchange. He goes to open his pads, stammering out the standard restaurant greeting.

The girl, obviously still pissed off, turns to the waiter. “C’mon stammer mouth. Out with it.”

Sebastian notices the waiter’s face change, but not into anger. Instead, the man just looks tired. He smells of spilt beer, and if the bags around his eyes are anything to go by, he hasn’t slept. He’s a bit older than somebody should be who is working in a restaurant front of house, and there’s a simple silver band wrapped around one of his fingers. “Oi,” Sebastian warns. “Just because I’m being a bitch to you don’t mean you have to be rude to him. He didn’t do anything. Get your stick out of your ass.”

Sebastian is completely aware of how much of a hypocrite he is being, considering that he is rude to just about everyone, but he’s tired and taking something about this girl is just pissing him off. She’s gyrating on his nerves, and he’s not planning to start caring about other people’s feelings in general, but any opportunity to chew this girl out is an opportunity.

The waiter sighs - in what Sebastian thinks of as relief - before trying to take their order again. Sebastian is about to order some lasagna when the girl cuts him off again.

“You don’t know me. You don’t know what’s going on in my life.”

“Well, do you know him? Do you know what’s going on in his life? Taking restaurant shifts on the side so that he can help pay for his new-born baby, up all last night with the thing teething.” He adds emphasis to the last part. “Do you know?”

A silence settles over the girl, and Sebastian quietly orders for them both. She doesn’t raise her eyes to either Sebastian or the waiter, mostly pretending to adjust her hair or check her nails. She remains willfully silent until the waiter returns with some drinks.

“I’m sorry,” she says to him quietly and authentically. The waiter simply smiles in response, and when he’s gone, she drops her head onto the table. “I’m so tired.”

Sebastian’s first response is to tell her that everybody is, but he knows that tired isn’t exactly what she means. It’s a feeling of loss in your bones, of never properly resting, because you can’t rest when you only have half of your heart.

“My _partner_ ,” the girl starts exasperatedly, “doesn’t remember me, and I don’t want to give her the ring. The last few lives, she has been in so much pain, and I don’t want to make her remember that. But if I don’t, she isn’t mine in the same way I am hers.”

      Sebastian looks down to his glass, wondering if that would be worse than where he is now. In a way, it would probably be like Porcelain; Sebastian knew of him, but had never had him. And the longing after having them, surely it would be worse.

      “How long have you been like this?” Sebastian asks, wanting to know if this is the first of fifteenth time she has gone through this process.

      “I was born in 1944, if that’s what you mean,” she replies with a flick of her hand. So, Sebastian calculates, the girl across from Sebastian has gone through it three times, at a rough guess. The pain is very real then (not that Sebastian doesn’t feel the pain, but it is in a different way) and not used to it either.

“How about you?” she asks in return.

“1722.”

The girl doesn’t reply to that, and he can see her trying to do the mental math required. “Wow.”

“Look,” Sebastian croaks, memories of his life playing over and over, making it harder to form a sentence. He doesn’t want to spend another sixty years waiting, but a part of him knows that maybe it would be the best thing for his partner in this life. “It doesn’t get any easier; you just find ways to cope. But sometime, you’re going to have to consider the fact that what is best for them isn’t what you want. Sometime, you’ll find them and you won’t get to keep them. But it’s what they need. They’re happy without you.”

“Is that what yours is?” the girl concluded, just as Sebastian thought he was in control of his voice.

“I don’t know yet, but I think he will be,” Sebastian agrees.

“What is it?” the girl asks, eyes trying to gain the attention of Sebastian’s, and failing at it.

Sebastian cuts a piece of his lasagna off the edge, using his knife until it is a perfect square. “He is happy, without me, already.”

“That’s a bit self-centred, isn’t it?”

Sebastian’s eyebrows flick down.

“It’s not as if you’re the only thing to make him happy. I don’t like boys but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy them,” the girl continues.

“Well, fucking boys for attention is probably a bit self centered,” Sebastian snorts in response, words dark and defensive. The girl’s words have hit home; he had already been contemplating with the idea of leaving Kurt alone, but blatantly being called out as self-centered is just rude. Because if he loved Dino or Conrad or Porcelain as much as he claims to, wouldn’t he want the best for them?

But he is a self-centered asshole when it comes down to it, and he hadn’t spared a thought to becoming a home wrecker earlier the night, so why was he wondering about it now?

“I wasn’t fucking them for attention,” the girl spits back at Sebastian, and now they’re both on their guard.

“Oh, for control, my bad.”

“Jesus Christ, maybe if you weren’t such a neurotic asshole you’d have a better chance at your partner. As it is, I’m ready to go all Lima Heights on you.”

“Lima Heights? Sounds as harmless as elementary school. What ya gonna do? Paper cut me?”

The girl kicks the chair out from under her, leaning over the table and slapping Sebastian cleanly across his face. His hand flicks up instinctively, cradling around his face.

The sting that her hand has left across his face actually hurts; it doesn’t usually hurt when he is slapped. Usually he could go for a round of slapping – when his (human) friends slap him, he doesn’t usually feel it – but now he is nowhere near interested. Maybe it’s because he can actually feel it this time.

When he brings his hand back to look at, there’s no blood there, even though he had expected some. His hands and fingers are still white, and at a guess, so is his face, the blood not responding like it would in a human.

He is so wrapped up in his own head that he doesn’t notice the girl pull some paper and a pen out of her bag, crunching over the table to write something onto it. She rips at the paper, and then pushes the slip of paper across the table.

What he assumes is her number is written in black pen across the lines of the paper, with a big ‘S’ under it.

“Look, when you’re ready to stop being such an asshole, here’s my number,” she announces, before pushing in her chair and walking off, leaving Sebastian with two plates of lasagna.

He wonders when he became the only asshole sitting at that table.

 

+

 

Legs kicked up and head leaning against the bed-head, Sebastian balances the small piece of paper on the tip of his finger.

The idea of a friend who he can carry through his years is appealing and probably more necessary than he would like to admit, but that would mean having a friend. And by extension, that would mean being friendly.

The appeal of the Dalton boys, if he admits it to himself, is that are for the most part expendable. They aren’t permanent or static; if he fucks up really bad, he doesn’t have to live with it for long.

The fear that humans have of words or an action daunting them for the rest of their lives doesn’t really apply to Sebastian; he is free from such persecution, and he as always enjoyed it. Maybe that’s the problem.

Reaching over to grab his phone, Sebastian programs the number in under “S” because he still has no idea what her name was. 


	3. Chapter 3

Considering that Sebastian can’t physically become sick, he hasn’t had a sick day off in a long time - where a long time is in excess of three hundred years. Hangovers are a thing of the past to him, which makes sneaking out of an apartment at 5am effortless and silent.

But he has become familiar with the concept of ‘mental health days’, a concept that he is on the fence about.  He may not have stayed rigid in his ideals and morals over time – if he had, he would probably be sprouting the morals of a 1700 century world – but he doesn’t like this one. Persistence and honour; braving through all obstacles.

This doesn’t stop him from taking a mental health day though. He legitimately doesn’t want to get out of bed and face the day, after such a night. He knew he was going to be flat out rejected by Kurt, in every sense of the word. As they stood now, Sebastian knew that he was no competition against Blaine. They were happy – _Kurt_ was happy – and Sebastian wasn’t sure if Kurt would be happier with him. In this lifetime, he had nothing to offer that Blaine couldn’t give, overtly anyway. This Kurt was foolhardy and head heavy, with strong morals and a very dedicated boyfriend.

For a second, Sebastian very seriously considers letting Kurt go in this lifetime, watching the boy twist through his life from a non-interfering distance. He could watch from afar; watch this Kurt make his way into New York and onto the stage, because this Kurt has the drive for it and the resources to get there; watch this Kurt get married to a man who isn’t Sebastian; watch this Kurt have children and raise children; watch this Kurt die and then find him all over again.

But Sebastian selfishly realises that this Kurt is _his_ Kurt. He’s the boy that Sebastian has spent his lifetimes chasing across the globe. He has ended up in Europe and Australia, drawn to places where the only common factor was Kurt. He has fought before for this boy’s affections, and he has spent the last seventy years without them. All Sebastian would have to do would be to get Kurt to willingly open the locket, and Kurt would remember.

This Kurt is his Kurt. The drive for music. The passion for the stage. The dedication to family. The encompassing love for another, single person.

So Sebastian decides that he will leave the decision, and let himself wallow in self-pity just for a day.

 

+

 

After telling the office that he won’t be attending class due to the flu and insisting to the receptionist that he doesn’t need to go see the nurse, he lets himself wallow.

Pulling the blanket up to be snug around his neck (a useless act as he doesn’t feel warmth or cold) he lies in bed, hands cuddled around a bottle of alcohol. He should probably have a shower – get the smell of the club off his skin- but that would require more effort than he was willing to exert.

Quickly, the texts started coming in. Everybody checking that he was okay, a few offers to skip class to make sure that he was okay, and even a few offers of get-well sex (which is new), but Sebastian replied to none of it. He kept his laptop shut; no access to Facebook, or Tumblr.

(The internet had been one of Sebastian’s favorite creations, because _porn._ )

He refused the food that was brought to his door, not feeling particularly interested in pretending to enjoy something that he found abhorrent; he has been around a long enough time to know something or another about food, and the Dalton canteen is good, but they’re not great. Especially, or so he has heard, when people are sick.

Time ticks over in longer segments than it ever has in the past; when time is a relative idea, it passes quite quickly, but now, Sebastian could swear that it had never been so slow, with nothing to occupy his head or hands but bothersome memories and non-affective alcohol.

It’s 5:30pm when Sebastian hears a knock on the door, becoming aware of his surroundings. He’s disorientated as to when it became 5:30pm, but nevertheless, it is 5:30pm and there is somebody knocking on his door.

The knocking lasts for a minute, and then stops, which is great, because Sebastian is sprayed out on his bed, and he is not moving to open the door for anyone.

A minute later, the knocking starts again, but this time it is accompanied by a voice. “Bas, I know you’re in there.”

The nickname hits Sebastian off guard, as does the softness in Kurt’s voice. They aren’t on good terms in any sense, and Sebastian had done nothing to prompt such a reaction.

Dragging himself out of bed, Sebastian answers the door, to Kurt holding out a Tupperware container. As Sebastian eyes the container, he doesn’t notice Kurt eyeing his attire – or lack of.

There’s no energy beyond asking why Kurt is there. No energy to smirk or make a suggestive comment as Kurt asks Sebastian to put on some clothes. Today, there’s just no energy.

“I made you soup – no, I mean, I made soup,” Kurt says, taking a seat on the corner of Sebastian’s bed, cradling the Tupperware on his lap. As Kurt avoids Sebastian’s eyes, they both know that that’s not why Kurt is there.

“Just spit it out,” Sebastian says, sitting himself down on the other end of the bed.

Kurt shrugs. “I heard you were sick.”

Sebastian gives him a pointed look.

“Okay, so I felt guilty about last night. I didn’t have to be mean to you.”

Sebastian feels like just taking a rip at Kurt for a minute. Kurt didn’t have to be that mean, he could have handled in another way. Sebastian knew the right words, he could hurt Kurt here. He could use the words he used 114 years ago in a fight that meant that they wouldn’t talk until Kurt’s next lifetime.

Kurt studies the sheets, probably determining the thread count, running his finger up and down along the same segment. Sebastian waits for Kurt to make an excuse to leave, but a few silent minutes pass and he doesn’t.

Instead, he stands up, placing the soup on the bed and wanders around the small room, neatening as he goes. His fingers skirt all over Sebastian’s belongings, realigning books and straitening pencils, adjusting the angle of how a jumper falls over the back of the chair as to avoid major creases.

Sebastian doesn’t say anything, doesn’t let himself move. He isn’t going to be the one to give in first; he’s not going to crush in front of Kurt Hummel. He will though, he decides, eat the soup. Maybe he eats it because he’s hungry, or because he misses the way Kurt puts love into food, or maybe as a first step to forgiving Kurt.

He has been so angry and lonely, and loneliness in a dark place can never end well. It distilled love to hate, from enthusiasm to pain.

The room does feel lighter though, with Kurt in it, and Sebastian tracks every single movement with his eyes. It is even more obvious now that they’re alone that Kurt isn’t comfortable with something; Sebastian can’t tell what it is though. Nevertheless, Kurt’s shoulders are hunched ever so slightly, and his outfit seems a bit more fabricated than they ever had been.

No matter which version, clothes have always been more than pieces of fabric to Kurt. Sebastian remembers the first time they slept together - shortly after finding out that he was immortal, somehow - and waking up next to Kurt sewing red velvet cuffs to his coat, a red that matched the intricate stitching of his coat lapels, in a imitation of lace. He remembers meeting Kurt in 1814 again and being way too turned on over pantaloons. Hopefully, Kurt had been in a good place during the 1990s, judging every issue of vogue and watching successful fashion brands like Alexander McQueen bloom.

Kurt stops, and even with his back facing Sebastian, Sebastian knows that Kurt has realised something. Sebastian braces himself, hoping that maybe somehow Kurt has remembered and he’s about to get a verbal berating, but no berating comes and it quickly becomes obvious that Kurt has noticed something rather than realised something.

Shifting on his bed to find what Kurt is so fixated on, Sebastian knows what it is before he sees it.

“I have a locket like this,” Kurt murmurs, and Sebastian has to catch himself from replying “I know.”

“My mother gave it to me - actually, it was left to me in her will, specifically. She used to wear it all the time, but we could never get it open.” And this caught Sebastian by surprise. Kurt spoke about his mother in past tense, in terms of a will. In terms of dead.

Sebastian could stand up now, go get the locket and offer it to Kurt. As soon as Kurt would take it from, Kurt would flip it around in his palm, run his delicate fingers around the shape of it, and then try to open it. It would open, and Kurt would know. Kurt would remember. He would remember what Sebastian meant to him, all their time spent together. The big kicker of this situation is that Kurt would remember all the bad things. Every death in every life. Every death of ever life. Their tendency to fight. The lives that were spent in pain because he was gay.

And this Kurt has bags engraved around his eyes, bruises on his skin, hollow in his eyes. This Kurt is exhausted.

Brushing the sleep out of his eyes, Sebastian comes to his decision. He’s going to leave this Kurt, maybe watch from afar, because it’s what he needs. So Sebastian makes no move to get the locket. If Kurt wants to look, he can look without interference.

Delicately picking up the locket, Kurt studies it. He runs his fingers over it, commenting on how it’s an exact replica. When he can’t open it, Kurt makes a disappointed sound, and Sebastian would find it cute if it wasn’t so damned frustrating.

“Time’s up, Pricilla,” Sebastian starts, walking over to open the door. “It took me weeks to get your perfume out of this room when I moved in, and if you and the entire New York City pride float stay here any longer, I’m in danger of becoming seriously mentally damaged. Considering it seems that they didn’t teach you about over staying your welcome in that public school, or well to read, because the two letters before ‘mens’ actually mean something, I’ll spell it out for you. You need to leave.”

Kurt turns to Sebastian, still holding the locket, looking astonished but Sebastian’s outburst. He looks at Sebastian with wide eyes and still hands, and he doesn’t say anything. A calm somehow settles over the room, and the room fills with the noise of Sebastian’s fingers tapping nervously against the doorframe. He goes to close it when Kurt shows no sign of leaving, because enough of this conversation has been made public, and Sebastian is very aware of his friends’ fondness for Kurt.  The hinges squeal as Sebastian moves it, but he doesn’t get too far before Kurt is storming out of his room.

He watches Kurt go, and knows that it was a good decision. Not a great one, but a good one. There are no good byes or hugs, nothing to end the pages of a book with. Just an unfinished sentence.

There’s a slam at the end of the dorm, and the whole building feels tense. Sebastian guesses that there will only be a few seconds before people come to stickybeak, and he is in no mood to have people do such a thing, so he closes his door. In this age of technology though, a closed door doesn’t stop prying. His phone goes off with multiple messages, his laptop pings of new Facebook messages, and there’s an audible murmur through the building.

 _Bloody people_ , Sebastian complains to himself. It probably doesn’t help that he had deliberately kept himself as an enigma at this school.

Banging loudly on the walls, he lets out a string of curses that quiets down the talking all around him. For a bunch of private school boys, they have really bad manners, and that’s something coming from Sebastian, as he knows he’s selective about his own.

“Sebastian,” Trent says, standing in Sebastian’s doorway, and as Sebastian looks around he can see Nick, Jeff and David standing there too. There is concern etched all over their faces, and it doesn’t help that he has ignored all their text messages from the morning. They never did anything wrong. Sighing in defeat, he waves them in, ignoring the raised eyebrows at his action.

“Soup. Yum,” Jeff says, hair a mess, as he sits on the bed. Peering a corner off, he gives it a sniff. “Smells good too; where’d you get this?”

Nick fondly slaps the back of Jeff’s head in a soft reprimand, reminding them of their situation, removing any warmth or conversation they had brought with them.

“Four guys in your room and all of them dressed, what a change,” Trent jokes, voice thick and quivering, trying to fill the space.

Although Sebastian has nothing to prove, owes them nothing, he’s still trying to find a way to explain himself without getting chucked into the loony bin. He doesn’t need their approval, but a part of him desires it, and would like to keep the respect he has gained here. Have more of a reputation than as a man-slut. Have friends that he’ll keep in contact with for the rest of their lives. The right words are hard to find, and a terse nod doesn’t seem to have the desired effect. He’s hoping that he can muddle through, but he doesn’t get the chance to start, because the hallway is filled with loud, repetitive whispers again.

Kurt is storming - quite gracefully - down the length of the hallway, golden chain dangling from his fist, cutting through the air as he moves. The gathered group of Warblers follows Sebastian out as he leers out of his door to look at the commotion, and as soon as Kurt has made his way into Sebastian’s room again, the boys have filed out and closed the door behind them (even if their ears are pressed up against it.)

It is obvious that Kurt is in a silent rage, but Sebastian isn’t quite sure why. His words were no worse than they have ever been, and he knows that Kurt takes as much pleasure as he does from the verbal sparring, which doesn’t explain such a reaction. They can usually go a few more rounds before Kurt shows even the slightest hint of cracking, and this seething rage is beyond cracked.

“How dare you,” Kurt begins, his voice a picture of calmness. “How dare you say those things to me. You know exactly what it feels like to be prosecuted for being gay, and you do it to another person? You are a despicable excuse for a human being. Not only that, but you dress horribly, treat the people around you like animals, have no respect for other people’s boundaries, and your face is wrong on quite a few levels. I would say that you have no idea what it is like to grow up scared of yourself, motherless and thrown into a dumpster everyday, considering that you’ve never had to work a day in your life and never been persecuted for being yourself, but somehow, I know that’s not true. I know that you’ve seen more that you’ve seen more than most of us will in a lifetime, that you’ve watched people you love die over and over again, and I don’t know why. I know that you’re not actually interested in Blaine, and I am bewildered as to why you think paying attention to him will get you my affection, because that’s more pathetic than the marcs spring line of 2008.” There’s no stopping Kurt now, and even if Sebastian could, he wouldn’t, because angry Kurt is completely and it is inexplicable hot.

Kurt pifs the locket at Sebastian’s bed, and it lands with a soft clink, the chain bouncing behind it. Picking it up off the bed and turning it over in his hand, Sebastian is silent.

“-And you have the audacity to lie to be about this locket,” Kurt is saying, and Sebastian is about to point out that he never lied because he never said anything, “and I don’t know how it is exactly the same as my one, right down to the engraving on the back.”

Kurt’s ripping the locket out of Sebastian’s hand, and the chain gets hooked amongst Sebastian’s fingers. It takes a few seconds to realise what happened; Sebastian is looking at Kurt looking at the locket, and now that they’re both touching it, that Kurt is taking it from Sebastian. The clasp on the side of the locket just falls off to the side, flipping over to be dangling from the main part; the fact that it has chosen now to open would be funny if it weren’t so damned frustrating. With his dainty little fingers, Kurt opens it, and the two halves of the locket fall apart, to show two portraits. On one side of the locket is a picture of Kurt, how he would look in about five years, and on the other side is a matching one of Sebastian. The collars and neckties of the shirts they were wearing were show just how old the photo was, and it’s really quite amazing how both the locket and the pictures have kept well.

This though is what Sebastian wanted to avoid in this lifetime. Now not only is Kurt going to be bitching at him for his actions of the last few days, but he’ll be going on about everything he has done in the last three hundred years.

“What’s happening?” Kurt asks, speaking as if he’s not completely in his own head, voice now calm. “I can remember things that I didn’t do. I can remember - horrendous outfits.”

Sebastian laughs quietly. Of course Kurt would remember outfits over their relationship. Based on his past experience with this, Kurt’s memories of his previous lives will come back over a few days, and he’ll struggle with accepting it. They’ll argue a lot, but that’s their natural state of being; it’s how they communicate. But usually, Sebastian has learnt from experience, Kurt will remember something sexual, which would make them both pretty happy. But the thing about those Kurts was that they were wanders, lost souls, alone. And this Kurt, however much it displeases Sebastian, has Blaine, and this Kurt has standards.

Kurt repeats his question, this time looking at Sebastian instead of the locket. Kurt’s eyes are prickling around the edges, his lips curling down.

Sebastian sighs. “Do you want the long or short story?” Not that there is any story, because Sebastian doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand why they’re like this: himself immortal, with the ability to manipulate his appearance, and Kurt, human but reincarnated. He doesn’t understand why they are drawn together every life, and he doesn’t understand why sometimes they miss decades. “Have you ever seen Doctor Who?”

“Don’t insult me Sebastian,” Kurt snorts. “We both know you’re not the Doctor. You have to have some heart and compassion for that.”

“No need to be such a bitch, Pricilla,” Sebastian replies, tongue laced with venom. “Do you want to know or what, your majesty?”

“I don’t think I want these memories if you’re going to be an effeminate shaming asshole. Being called a girl isn’t offensive, by the way, so if you want to insult me, find something a little less sub par.”

“If you’re going to be this much hard work, maybe you’re not even worth the oxygen I’m spending talking to you.”

“You don’t need oxygen to live, you’re immortal, so stop breathing then if I’m so offensive to you.” Kurt looks surprised at himself, and Sebastian is surprised that Kurt has remembered such an insignificant detail at this point in time.

Rolling his eyes, Sebastian decides to just tell Kurt. “Well there’s an episode of Doctor Who where the Doctor traps himself in a pocket watch, and that’s the closet analogy I can give you to what’s going on here. You’ll remember everything at one point though.”

Kurt shudders, his voice steady. “I’m going to remember watching hundreds of years of you and your conquests. How absolutely thrilling.”

“That’s n-“ Sebastian starts, before he stops himself. If Kurt is thinking that, then he hasn’t learnt of the nature of their previous relationships. “Look, okay, so we have some history. I still think you should leave.”

“Make me,” Kurt challenges, with a new flame in his eye, as if he has found some new power. And whatever it is, probably knowledge or just plain words, is powerful. They play games in riddles, speak languages with tongues, hurt each other with dictionaries. They’ve never physically hurt each other; what’s the need when a word can cut deeper?

“Okay, I’ll just call campus security ” Sebastian says, opening the door, before softly adding, “just go home to Blaine.”

The reminder of Kurt’s boyfriend seems to stir something, and Kurt looses all the challenge from his eyes. He nods, walking across the small room to hand Sebastian back the locket. “This is yours.”

Sebastian takes the locket, wrapping his fingers around it tightly.

And then Kurt is gone, lingering in the doorway before he steps out and away.

Finally getting the time to take a breath, Sebastian lets himself breathe, but instead of finding it calming, instead he’s assaulted with the smell of his room. It smells so uniquely like Kurt, like it did when he first moved in, and Kurt was only in there for less than ten minutes. Crashing into his bed, Sebastian starts to worry. He had no idea what would happen now, especially with Blaine in the picture, and it was something that needed to be worked out. He couldn’t just ignore it and hope it all worked out, because a definite decision had to be made. He could leave Dalton, right in that minute, and move across the country, hoping that Kurt didn’t remember everything, and leave Kurt in his comfortable life. Or he could stay, and if he stays, eventually Kurt would come to him, up wrenching his own life in the process. 

Dropping his head into his hands, arms propped up on his knees, he sighs, deciding that maybe food would be a best first course of action. Making decisions while hungry (although he doesn’t require food to survive) is always a bad idea.

He has just resigned himself to move in two more minutes when he finds a finger pushing under his head to prop his face up. He doesn’t get much time to argue or debate or insult, because without explanation, Kurt’s lips are on his, legs pushing in to stand in-between Sebastian’s, body arching over.

They’re not exactly as he remembers. These lips have experience and tricks, and even though it’s really just a brush of the lips, Sebastian knows he wants more. He wants to see what these lips know, because these lips have tricks that Sebastian didn’t teach them.

Their eyes catch as Kurt pulls back, and there’s pain in Kurt’s eyes.

This time, after Kurt leaves, he doesn’t come back.


	4. Chapter 4

The coffee at the Lima bean the next day is just exceedingly obvious, and Sebastian lets a few cups go cold as he stares into his textbooks in the corer of the cafe. He's trying to study, but when you know all of the content and you're a bit emotionally compromised, it becomes a bit difficult. He has to at least try and keep up the pretence though, because he's sharing the small table with Jeff and Jeff's textbooks.

If Sebastian were to guess, he'd say that Jeff keeps bringing new coffee because he's worried; worried about why Sebastian is in such an obvious funk. Sebastian, for the most part, tries to just ignore it. Being at the Lima bean means that Jeff can study more then normal, for some unknown reason, and even with the other boy pottering around asking about coffee and suggesting different types, he sits down for long enough to ask Sebastian questions about French conjugation of irregular verbs.

Sebastian just isn't in it though, as he explains verbs to Jeff, and he doesn't know when he will be again. He isn't big on self pity, and he has had his mental health day, but this rejection hurts differently than all the others did, and it's not because it's from his bonded.

Pulling the lid off the coffee - they'll have it start ordering in crockery soon because all the take away duos are a waste if they're not being used, and he's off enough that Jeff wouldn't find that request weird - he peers down into the cup. It's cold in his hands, but he knows that his slightly higher than normal temperature means that everything is cold, and with his mind groggy and sad, he finds it a little bit hard to judge the temperature correctly.

He's staring into the crema when his name is called, pulling him into the surroundings of the coffee shop instead of the depths of his own mind. When he looks up, all he can see is Jeff. It's not until he follows the line of Jeff's waving hand that he wishes he hadn't looked up.

Framed by the wooden frame of the door, Kurt is hovering. His eyes are glued on Sebastian, and the colour in them is wavering, like he's trying to make a decision. His outfit is so tight that Sebastian sees a flash of Porcelain behind Kurt's eyes, and he'd think that it were except for the fact that Sebastian knows that Porcelain never touched the locket.

Sebastian is the first one to look away, down at his coffee, pretending that Jeff isn’t waving Kurt over. Kurt appears though, by Sebastian’s side, and he’s ever so grateful that Kurt is standing beside him because it means that they don’t have to look at each other. On the other hand though, he can feel Kurt beside him, in his space, within an arm’s length, and Kurt’s heat is nearly burning Sebastian.

“Another?” Sebastian chokes out, rising out of his chair and moving off towards the register before Jeff can comment about his current drink or anything else different about the situation.  He orders two coffees, one for him and one for Jeff, and lingers around the coffee machine until they’re both done. When the barista passes him a full cream coffee, he throws a fit about ordering a skinny coffee.

“I didn’t pay for this,” Sebastian confirms, “this isn’t mine. I would like my coffee.”

It’s a dick move, and the Barista – over worked and underpaid – knows that Sebastian is lying.  She rolls her eyes and then stares at him, eyes laced with words, in some form of intimidation. When Sebastian doesn’t back down, eyes drilling back just asking her to test him, she gives up with a huff and flicks on the bean grinder. He’s quite sure that he hears a very quiet “fucker” under the girl’s breath, and the tips of his lips curl ever so slightly in response.

He tries to think about this girl, to take his mind of Kurt, looking at her as much as he can through the coffee machine, noting the pink stripes in her hair (which appear to be clip in, actually) and her popped colar, the way her jaw moves as if it is missing gum and how she waves from foot to foot.

He wonders if she is like he is. He wonders if she is somebody’s bonded. He wonders if she’s just completely normal; he wonders what that would be like.

“Hadn’t expected to see you here, or well, ever,” a feminine voice says from over Sebastian’s shoulder, and as he turns around to see who it is, he catches her very scent. It’s the woman from the restaurant, the one like him.

“Santana,” she says, extending a hand out towards him. Shaking it, he introduces himself by name only, before glancing over Santana’s shoulder to look at Kurt. There’s a blonde girl snuggling up to him, both of her legs hanging over one of his as they’ve both sat down, smiling and laughing at Jeff. Kurt doesn’t seem perturbed by the contact. Sebastian knows that Kurt is gay, but for a second, he wonders, because Kurt really is comfortable with the blonde sitting all over him.

 Santana, her reflexes and observation skills as fast as his are, notices his glance. She looks slightly offended for a second, her features distorting – and she accused _him_ of being selfish- before she whips around to see what Sebastian had been looking at.

“Oh my god, it’s Lady Hummel, isn’t it?” Santana asks, looking both astonished and impressed. She places her hand over her mouth, stifling laugher. “I should have seen this coming. He is the only other gay person in Ohio.”

“I’m not quite sure about that anymore,” Sebastian says in a moment of wild doubt, eyes flickering over to the very female female partially sitting on Kurt.

“Oh Britt? Nothing to worry about there Cyclopse,” she chuckles, obviously not even trying to keep the laughter in anymore.

The barista calls Sebastian for his coffee, and Santana whips past him to pluck the coffee from the table and take a large sip. Sebastian thinks to protest but he is scrutinizing the blonde so hard that he just flicks her off with his hand almost absentmindedly.

“Like you can talk,” Sebastian says, turning back towards Santana, ignoring the slightly confounded look of the barista behind the counter. “The blonde one – Britt – is yours isn’t she? I must admit, I thought there would be something more grand about her, but if dumb blonde is your style, who am I to argue?”

Santana’s lip curls and her eyes flicker for a second, before she metaphorically bears her claws. Sebastian has hit a pressure point, and Sebastian reminds himself to note it somewhere. He’s waiting for the slap or the punch, but nothing comes, until Santana is just standing with a smirk and arms crossed, saying nothing.

And that’s more unnerving than her slapping him.

She doesn’t break the silence, and neither does he, the sounds of Jeff, Kurt and Britt’s conversation waffling through.

“McKinley isn’t Dalton, but it’s good,” Kurt says in response to Jeff’s question about school.  “And Blaine’s okay, I suppose.”

At the mention of Blaine’s name, Sebastian’s lips curl around in slight disgust (how had he ever thought that _Blaine_ was his bonded) and Santana starts laughing.

“You’re more of a drama queen than Hummel is,” she exclaims, before taking Sebastian’s coffee and walking over to Kurt and Co, resting a hand on Britt’s shoulder before leaning over and placing a kiss onto her cheek.

Sebastian can hear Britt giggle at the public display of affection, both of them smiling, as well as Kurt. Kurt’s smile lacks the brightness though, and Sebastian realizes that he’s not looking at Kurt; he’s looking at the muddled person of Kurt and Dino and Conrad and every other form of Kurt he has had, all of his Kurt thoughts and feelings conflicting with the other’s.

There’s no more putting it off, so Sebastian makes his way towards the group, taking the other (Jeff’s) coffee with him. Kurt isn’t looking his way, is barely acknowledging his presence as Sebastian walks over. Sebastian is willing and ready to play that game too, to ignore the hell out of each other, but when Sebastian arrives, Kurt stands up rigidly, like how students used to rise when teachers entered the room.

“ _Bastian_ ,” Kurt says under his breath, accent heavily French. So Kurt has remembered them all then; woken up with another person’s memories and the ability to speak languages. Sebastian remembers the one after Dino trying to explain how terrifying it is, the onslaught of knowledge that they didn’t learn, of languages they had never heard; he remembers that night and how his bonded had trouble with speaking in one language, juggling between Italian, French and German.

“ _It’s confusing,_ ” Kurt mutters after Sebastian supplies no response, voice still enough that he can hear. Which means, that by extension, Santana can hear.

True to form, Santana is smirking across the table, carrying a conversation with Britt and successfully eavesdropping on his conservation.

“ _I can’t do this,_ ” Kurt starts still in French, “ _I remember you but I love him. I don’t want to hurt him. He matters.”_

_“No he doesn’t,”_ Sebastian rebuts, voice tethering on the edge of hissing. Blaine doesn’t matter, never mattered, and won’t matter in fifty years.

“Yes he does!” Kurt screeches at Sebastian in English, attracting the attention of not only their friends but other patrons of the café.

“Calm down princess, don’t need to get your panties in a knot.”

“I’ve got all these memories of you that are good, and I had hoped that they would mean that you’re not still a dick, but now you’re the king of assholes, and I don’t want to play this game. I don’t care if I was yours before, because now I’m not. Where did the person go who I switched with?” – Kurt’s voice slipping more and more into a German accent –“ and what have you done with him?”

Kurt storms out, leaving all of his friends slightly confused. Both Jeff and Britt look stunned; they have no idea what’s going on. Santana looks equal parts amused at the display and hurt by it.

“Pardon?” Jeff asks, eyebrows pulled together in confusion. “I don’t understand. I didn’t think you knew Kurt beyond Dalton.”

On some level, Sebastian knows Kurt is right. In the early years, he hadn’t been like this – snappy, yes, but ignorant of another person’s feelings, never – but the time did get to him, and maybe Porcelain’s words cut deeper than they should have. Maybe Porcelain was the odd one out, the one time his bonded didn’t come back as his bonded – the same face but a different mindset – or maybe between the want and longing and loneliness of the time, he had seen a face he had wanted to see.

The memories of the boy’s face and body moving with his, moving _for_ him, come back in such a strong onslaught that Porcelain’s face blurs, and Sebastian isn’t so certain anymore. Sebastian doesn’t know anymore, can feel the edges starting to blur. He knows that genetically it is possible for somebody to look enough like Kurt or Dino or Conrad that between the dust and smoke of a room Sebastian could have seen what he wanted to see.

Porcelain hadn’t been there the next day when Sebastian went to visit; Porcelain who had defined so much of Sebastian’s current thoughts. Porcelain never touched the locket, never even got close, so as much Sebastian knows, he knows nothing.

He has spent so much time believing that Porcelain’s words were that of his bonded that even the mere thought of them not being totally upends him, throwing everything out of perspective.

“I don’t,” Sebastian replies to Jeff finally, because maybe he didn’t.

+

 

Talking Jeff around doesn’t end up being very hard, and when they get back to Dalton, Sebastian sneaks back to his room under the pretense of a headache. The next day, as he walks down the hall, he can hear the rumors, but the story is no more wild than Kurt yelling at Sebastian for trying to steal Blaine.

Sebastian doesn’t rebut what he hears, takes it at face value, and then accepts it as the truth. He knows where it came from – Jeff had been the only Dalton boy at the Lima Bean – but he can’t blame Jeff; the boy had only wanted to talk about the experience with Nick, he probably just shouldn’t have done it over dinner.

It is what it is though, so Sebastian keeps his head up and doesn’t let anybody see his cracks.

+

It has been four weeks since Sebastian has heard anything from Kurt.

The first week was pretty dull; he was stuck in his own head trying to work out just what is real and what had been real.

In the second week, Sebastian raised a whole letter grade, which is impressive because he was already hovering around a B+/A. It’s not that he spends more time doing his work or actually studies (because he is never going to have to), but became he completely wipes anything related to his bonded from his mind. When he’s not trying to find his bonded, it seems that he has a lot more space in his head to think with.

Jeff also coincidently rises a letter grade, and he wastes a lot of credit texting Jack and Riley. He sends Santana off a text asking for friendly coffee, but he doesn’t expect a response – good, because he didn’t get one.

In the third week, he marathons two television shows. Given, one of them sadly only has one season, but it does take up a lot of his time.

In the forth week, Sebastian decides that he has to get out. He has spent enough time cooped up inside Dalton’s walls, so he goes a town over and finds a swimming pool. He jumps in the deep end and floats around until the lifeguard looks away and drops himself to the bottom of the pool.

He breathes out, watches the bubbles rise to the surface, and settles into a sitting position on the bottom. The water blurs around him and his eyes lose focus, the sound drowning out around him. It’s easier not to think when he’s under water, to shut off his brain and ignore the world around him. He can’t get away for very long, as a lap swimmer spots him on the bottom and he is forced to resurface; the change from the water to the air is enough though, to remind him that he is still alive (always alive).

The lifeguard gives him a confused look, trying to remember if he had been in the pool. Eventually they just shrug, ignoring the fact that they had lost visual contact for long enough that if human, Sebastian could have died.

 Nevertheless, when Sebastian finds himself at a quaint coffee shop that he has never visited before, he is calm. He has accepted that Kurt doesn’t want him, and Kurt will never want him, during this lifetime. He’s ready to keep his head down at Dalton, maybe go to college again and get a new degree, get a job and spend the rest of Kurt’s lifetime doing the same monotonous actions day in and day out until Kurt has another name and no Blaine attached. Maybe in the quiet moments he’ll write a book or a play or a song or actually learn to swim; he’ll just quietly exist.

He settles into the back of the café, nestled in a single booth, sipping at his coffee and nibbling at his biscotti. He isn’t sad, but rather defeated. It didn’t feel like this when he never saw Porcelain again, whether he was his bonded or not, because Porcelain wasn’t a downright rejection – Porcelain was a possibility.

“You look younger than I had expected,” a smooth voice says, sliding in around the other side of the table, sitting with a rigid back and ramrod hands.

“I have a very rigorous nightly skin regime,” Sebastian replies, lips pulling slightly.

Kurt laughs lightly back at Sebastian, not taking Sebastian’s words in a mocking way. They hadn’t meant to be mocking, but with their history, Sebastian wasn’t sure how they would be taken. Hell, he wasn’t even sure whom he was talking to anymore. Last time he had spoken to Kurt, it was the Kurt side versus all the others; Sebastian hadn’t seen such internal conflict with his bonded before, but then most other times, his bonded had been waiting for him, not being the main character in his own life.

“This is yours,” Kurt prompts as he pushes the locket across the table between them until it just sits there, neither of them touching it. “I don’t need it anymore. It is beautiful though.”

It just sits there, like a lifeline, joining them in a way that is obviously repulsive to Kurt. “What are you doing here?”

“I just dropped Blaine home,” Kurt replies, eyes looking at his fingers weaving together. “What’s good here? I didn’t even know this café existed.”

Sebastian notices the obvious change of subject but bites his tongue, trying not to dig his grave deeper than it already is. “I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve been here.”

“Really?” Kurt wonders. “I’ve never been here before. Driven past it a few times, thought I’d check it out today.”

It’s not a coincidence, and they both know that. The same instinct that had driven Sebastian around the globe has now driven Kurt to a coffee shop, but Sebastian really is trying to be good, so he makes no comment.

Sebastian’s about to ask Kurt how he is or maybe ask about the weather, but Kurt interrupts first. “Look, you don’t need to do a ‘I told you so.’”

“I wasn’t planning to. You made your position very clear,” Sebastian responds, distracting his hands with his cup, reaching for the sugar and adding some more, just for something to do.

“That’s – diplomatic of you.”

“I’m trying.”

They both go quiet again with nothing more to say, until Kurt disappears for a coffee. Sebastian doesn’t let his eyes linger more than politely over the boy as he stands in line, but he does wander why Kurt is here. The universe is being a dick, pushing them together when they so obviously won’t be.

Kurt returns, sans drink, and the silent keeps washing over them until the waitress squawkingly brings Kurt his coffee, saucer and cup clinking together.

When she disappears back to the coffee machine, Kurt looks up and his eyes flicker around until they gain the attention Sebastian’s own. “I broke up with Blaine. I didn’t want to lie to him or cheat on him.”

“So your automatic response was to get a coffee?”

“Don’t be a dick.”

“Natural response.”

“No, it isn’t.”

And dammit, Kurt remembering is now becoming more of a hindrance than help.

Kurt takes another sip of his coffee before standing up and perching his hands on the side of the table. “Look,” Kurt begins, leaning in over the table to start encroaching on Sebastian’s personal space. “In two months, you can start courting me, if you want.”

Sebastian does look up at that, searching Kurt’s eyes for honesty. Those words were the last he had expected to hear from Kurt’s mouth, and he isn’t prepared for Kurt to close the space between them and leave a peck on Sebastian’s mouth.

“Just give me some time, please?” Kurt pleads, but Sebastian is too stunned to reply. Instead, he watches as Kurt walks out of the café, leaving his coffee cup half full.

Well then.

 


End file.
